The product development process involves analysis of the marketplace, the buyer, the company’s capabilities, and the economic potential of new product ideas. This process may be both expensive and time consuming. To accelerate the process, many companies create multidisciplinary teams so that manufacturing and marketing plans can be developed in tandem while the product is being designed.

Generation and Screening of Ideas: The first step is to come up with ideas that will satisfy unmet needs. A producer may get new product ideas from its own employees or from external consultants, it may simply adapt a competitor’s idea, or it may buy the rights to someone else’s invention. Customers are often the best source of new product ideas.

Business Analysis: A product idea that survives the screening stage is subjected to a business analysis. At this point the question is: Can the company make enough money on the product to justify the investment? To answer this question, companies forecast the probable sales of the product, assuming various pricing strategies. In addition, they estimate the costs associated with various levels of production. Given these projections, the company calculates the potential cash flow and return on investment that will be achieved if the product is introduced.

Prototype Development: The next step is generally to create and test a few samples, or prototypes, of the product, including its packaging. During this stage, the various elements of the marketing mix are put together. In addition, the company evaluates the feasibility of large-scale production and specifies the resources required to bring the product to market.

Product Testing: During the product testing stage, a small group of consumers actually use the product, often in comparison tests with existing products. If the results are good, the next step is test marketing, introducing the product in selected areas of the country and monitoring consumer reactions. Test marketing makes the most sense in cases where the cost of marketing a product far exceeds the cost of developing it.

Commercialization: The final stage of development is commercialization, the large-scale production and distribution of those products that have survived the testing process. This phase requires the coordination of many activities—manufacturing, packaging, distribution, pricing and promotion. A classic mistake is letting marketing get out of phase with production so that the consumer is primed to buy the product before the company can supply it in adequate quantity. A mistake of this sort can be costly, because competitors may be able to jump in quickly. Many companies roll out their new products generally, going from one geographic area to the next. This enables them to spread the costs of launching the product over a longer period and to refine their strategy as the rollout proceeds.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The main elements of a successful productivity improvement program are the following:

Top management must be wholly committed to the program.

An effective organizational arrangement headed by someone responsible to top management for the program is essential.

Full awareness and understanding of the program objectives must exist at all organizational levels. Good labor-management relations are vital.

There should be free-flow communication between different structural elements of the organization. Recognition of the key role played by workers is crucial and must be demonstrated through a sound productivity gains-sharing system.

The program should be linked with measurement processes that are practical and easily understood. Goals should be set on the basis of feasibility as well as desirability.

The productivity improvement techniques (technical, behavioral and managerial) chosen for the program have to fit the situation and needs.

Monitoring, evaluation and feedback processes to identify results and barriers provide a basis for design improvements.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

All projects have a natural life cycle from birth to death and that changes inherent in the life cycle cause shifting interfaces and broad changes over time which dramatically increase the need for the project management approach. This life-cycle property is also shared by product sales and systems development.

The product sales life-cycle is probably the best known. Between the point of introduction and the final removal from the market (replacement by another product is more complicated) there are roughly four phases:

a) Introduction

b) Growth

c) Maturity

d) Decline

Actually, a product must go through research and development stages before it is introduced on the market. If we add these phases to the product we would have a larger cycle similar for products/projects/processes.

Full Products/Projects/Processs Life Cycle:

Pre-design phase—The product/project idea is born and given early evaluation. Early forecasts of performance, cost, and time aspects are made, as well as of organization and resource requirements. There is a high mortality rate in this phase.

Design phase—A much more detailed design of the project/product is developed and its feasibility and desirability are determined.

Pilot testing phase—An actual prototype of the product, system, or difficult prices of the project are made, tested, and redesigned as necessary.

Startup/Introduction phase—The product is introduced or the main project is started up.

Rampup/Growth phase—Product sales grow, and the product is expanded to its full volume.

Mature phase—Sales are full, as is the project effort size.

Rampdown/decline phase—Sales decline, phasing the project out.

Termination/divestment—The product is removed, the project is stopped, and the system is sold.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

The efforts of many companies to achieve transformational change have been counter-productive. Some of those who ‘believed’ or who ‘tried,’ now feel betrayed. There is insecurity, widespread disbelief and cynicism in many companies.

One of the reasons why so many people question either the commitment of senior management to change, or the feasibility of transformation, is that they perceive that all the change elements that the necessary for successful transformation are not in place.

As well as critical success factors, some obvious areas are being over-looked. The document, whether physical or electronic, is the currency of a business, the signals that pass through the nerves of the organic network and trigger intelligent reactions. It is the means by which most activities happen. Yet many organizations are unaware of how much time and resource are devoted to this unrecognized area of business, the production and distribution of documents.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

Committees are formally constituted bodies characterized by periodic, intermittent, or temporary rather than continuous functioning. Purposes for conducting a committee meeting almost always include an objective of gaining or maintaining inter-group coordination and/or cooperation. Staff or subgroup meetings have analogous purposes on the group level of analysis.

Committees integrate organizational behavior vertically in the authority hierarchy and/or horizontally across group boundaries. Committees may function primarily as a formal communications medium for one-way dissemination of information from above at one extreme all the way to omni-directional informational sharing (e.g., new projects, problems, etc.) at the other. Two other common committee functions are problem solving (e.g., performing a technical design, cost and schedule feasibility assessment) or decision making (e.g., adjusting and approving departmental overhead budgets for the upcoming three months).

There are both advantages and disadvantages to employing committees for any, or any combination, of these functions. The net effectiveness is emergent and is no doubt influenced by the nature of the tasks to be performed, the time available, the people involved, and primary task groups represented as well as other situational factors.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please contact www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight